Aid & Development Day | Sustainability is Key

¡Hola Familias! Somos Abby M. and Asher. Today we were the Líderes del Día, and the theme for today was Aid & Development. We woke up at around 8 am and had French toast and fruit for breakfast. After breakfast, we got ready for our first seminar where we learned about how we can positively impact our community.

During the first seminar, we talked about the differences in the meanings of “Help” and “Collaborate” which mean totally different things. Our main goal is to be collaborators, meaning we will listen to the members of the community. asking them what they need and how we can help. We will not do the work for them by taking away from their pay, but we will assist them in reaching their goal faster. We not only want to help, but we want the community to be engaged not only with us but also with each other. After a brief slide presentation, we were shown three videos that talked about the white savior complex. This is when people go into impoverished communities and try to “save” them but instead make matters worse. We see this characteristic not only in white people but also in those that are wealthy and privileged regardless of skin color. This negatively impacts the communities that they try to “save” because for instance when foreigners try to “save” different communities in third world countries they visit the orphanages. What they don’t know when going and then leaving the orphanages is that they actually cause the children to develop attachment disorders, which can be very harmful to their mental health. After watching those three videos and learning about the harms of the white savior complex, we watched a fourth video that talked about the harms of excessive tourism in Costa Rica that not only affects their environment but also takes things away from Costa Ricans like wealth and even clean water.

After the first seminar, we had some downtime and then had lunch a lunch of meat, vegetables, rice, and salad. Then we had a guest speaker that told us all about the importance of making sustainable projects so that they could be useful to this generation and many generations after. We learned about how all the products we will be using at the schools during our CAP are environmentally friendly and sustainable. Then we had some downtime and bought some snacks and got ready for Dinner. We did our regular nightly meeting where we talked about our day and all the things that we enjoyed. Lastly, we ended the day by watching John Wick, a high-action movie that we all enjoyed together while eating some snacks. Then finally it was time for bed.

View all the pictures of today’s adventures here!

Adios,
Abby M and Asher